Fifteen Years After 9/11: EHS Today Looks Back

EHS Today has published more than 300 articles that examine the events and aftermath of 9/11. No other event has impacted this magazine – or our country – more. Fifteen years later, we still think about it, talk about it and feel the impact of it.

As I write this while working from home on Sept. 8, it is a warm, sunny, perfect late-summer day. Almost too warm. Almost too perfect. It’s hard to believe that autumn, followed quickly by winter, will be here before I know it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, my circumstances were different: I was living in a different home, had a different job, was “almost” engaged to a different man, had different dogs… One thing was the same: it was a warm, sunny, perfect late-summer day and I was working from home. Life could not have been sweeter.

And then it happened; first one plane, then another, then another, then another. Both of the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, a field in Pennsylvania… What was happening?

It quickly became apparent it was a planned act of terrorism and once the immediate shock and grief wore off, the nation started the painful process of rescue, recovery, cleanup and rebuilding. Here at EHS Today, we covered the stories of the first responders who lost their lives and who tried to save lives, the cleanup workers slowly removing the massive piles of rubble, the government agencies tasked with trying to keep workers safe and monitor the contamination from the tons and tons of asbestos and other hazardous substances unleashed as the buildings disintegrated.

In fact, over the past 15 years, EHS Today has published over 300 articles, five blog entries and two photo galleries related to 9/11.

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 in 2006, EHS Today took a closer look at the health consequences responders faced in Manhattan during the rescue, recovery and cleanup operations at the World Trade Center (“9/11: Safety and Health Lessons Learned”).

Commenting on the events of 9/11 on the 10th anniversary, I said, "I am different now. We are different now."

The world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. We honor those who died that day, those who succumbed to injuries or illnesses in the dark days that followed, those who have fought and died for our country in the intervening years and all of the workers and employers who have kept our nation moving forward since that day.